The present invention relates to a method and an associated system for managing an interruption of the emission of an acoustic message in an aircraft.
In an aircraft cockpit, different monitoring systems are in charge of emitting alert messages in case of detection of an abnormal situation.
Firstly, the flight alert system (“Flight Warning System” for FWS for flight alert system, “Flight Warning Computer” for flight alert computer or else “Flight Warning Application” for flight alert application) is an on-board system intended to forewarn the crew members of an abnormal situation concerning a monitored system of the airplane.
The monitored systems may include detectors or calculators relating, for example, to the engines, to the fuel tanks or to the landing gears.
The flight alert system also emits automatic altitude announcements when the airplane passes through certain altitudes.
Furthermore, other monitoring systems have the function of forewarning the crew of risks related to the environment of the aircraft.
This is the case of the systems known as TAWS (“Terrain Awareness and Warning System” or impact warning and alert system), GPWS (“Ground Proximity Warning System” or ground proximity warning device), TCAS (“Traffic Collision Avoidance System” or on-board anti-collision system, also known as ACAS), WxR (“Weather Radio” or weather radar) or PWS (“Predictive Windshear System”, a shear prediction system).
It is possible to integrate several of the equipment items that monitor the environment of the aircraft in a single monitoring system, known, for example, as AESS (“Aircraft Environment Surveillance System” or aircraft environment monitoring system).
These different alert systems, whether their function is to monitor a system of the aircraft or of its environment, communicate with the pilot by alert messages, which may include texts on screens, the illumination of lamps and/or acoustic messages, which may include voice syntheses.
The solution adopted until now to manage alert messages involved preliminary classification of alert conditions into two categories: high-priority alert conditions and normal-priority alert conditions.
In the event of detection of a normal-priority alert condition by an alert system, the corresponding acoustic message is activated immediately, except if an acoustic message associated with a high-priority alert condition is in the course of emission.
When a normal-priority alert condition is detected while a high-priority acoustic message is in the course of emission, the acoustic message in the course of emission is continued until the end of detection of the corresponding alert condition or until the end of emission of the acoustic signal, in the case of a signal that can be stopped before the end of detection of the corresponding alert condition. The normal-priority acoustic message is then emitted if the associated alert condition is still in existence at that moment.
In the case of detection of a high-priority alert condition by an alert system, the corresponding acoustic message is activated immediately.
If a normal-priority acoustic message is already in the course of emission, the acoustic message in the course of emission is interrupted immediately and the new acoustic message is emitted.
This method has the disadvantage that it does not take into account the content of the message in the course of emission, and therefore it risks interrupting emission of this message without taking into account the intelligibility of this content by the pilot.
Document TSO-C151a (“Technical Standard Order”) presents such a solution of the type used heretofore.